August Wind is a top-down 'free-roaming shooter' about mining valuable metals off the backs of cloudeels. It's the Bachelor Thesis project for Jeremy Spillmann at the Zürich School of the Arts. It features charming 2D graphics and a gypsy soundtrack. [more inside]
posted by juv3nal on Aug 28, 2009 - 7 comments

The ring wing or annular airfoil is an aircraft design which has been experimented with throughout the history of aviation with some interesting variations. It has served as the inspiration for several paper airplane designs, model airplanes of course, and a variety of children's toys. The capabilities imagined by the French coléoptère engineers of the 1950's and 1960's and the U.S. "flying tank" designers are available today at least in the form of unmanned vehicles (large PDF brochure, 6 minute video download, 1½ minute YT news clip). The technology has also been adapted to become the surfboard tunnel fin and there are underwater UAVs as well.
posted by XMLicious on Aug 28, 2009 - 14 comments

Building and flying free flight model airplanes is a pastime so obscure it doesn't even register on the geek heirarchy. But in the period between Lindberg's flight across the Atlantic until the start of the Second World War, thousands of boys (and some girls) around the world succumbed to the allure of rubber, lube, and dope. [more inside]
posted by gamera on Aug 6, 2009 - 13 comments

Machu Picchu Post. Cute animation about an air mail pilot in the Andes and his strange encounter with a boy and his llama. [Via]
posted by homunculus on Jul 2, 2009 - 10 comments

Though the B-2 Spirit is perhaps the best-known of the flying wing designs, its creation came almost 50 years after the earliest attempts at creating fixed-wing aircraft with no definite fuselage. The first prototypes of Frenchman Charles Fauvel's flying wings followed the patent on his formula for the flying wing in 1929. Jack Northrop's newly formed Northrop Aircraft Co. created the first flying wing for the United States in 1940, dubbed Northrom N-1M "Jeep". But it was the Horten Brothers, German aircraft pilots and enthusiasts, who created the first fully-functional stealth flying wing: the Horten Ho IX. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Jun 24, 2009 - 32 comments

Ask the Pilot. Columnist Patrick Smith explains why you shouldn't be afraid of flying. [more inside]
posted by lalex on Jun 5, 2009 - 42 comments

United Airlines settles suit over hidden porn United Airlines has settled a federal sexual-harassment lawsuit filed by a former pilot who grounded herself after repeatedly finding pornography hidden in the cockpits of domestic airline flights. Before settling, the airline appeared to equate art nudes and porn as part of its defense. The idea of cockpit-as-boyzone has been shot down before. [more inside]
posted by Kirth Gerson on Mar 30, 2009 - 175 comments

Stories that Fly is a citizen media project that features a growing collection of digital stories about general aviation. The stories are contributed by student journalists, aviators, and interested community members and cover regional airports, events, and people in the Ohio aviation community.
posted by netbros on Mar 23, 2009 - 3 comments

Infrastructurist. Although the blog is only a few days old, they've already debunked some of the myths of 24, interviewed Michael Dukakis, and grappled with Amtrak economics.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Feb 5, 2009 - 27 comments

DARPA , the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has issued a call for proposals for submersible aircraft concepts. Although the idea has some pedigree, and there was actually a flying, diving prototype called the Reid Flying Submarine RFS-1 back in the sixties, one must wonder whether it is really of any use. [more inside]
posted by Skeptic on Oct 20, 2008 - 19 comments

"Once Upon A Time... there were two very special airplanes that lived.... far.... far.... away on a tiny island in the Bering Sea. One was named Rivet Ball and the other was named Rivet Amber. Very few people knew anything about these two planes or the men that flew them. Even family members knew very little. That's because their mission was... TOP SECRET." (some photos and language within are NSFW) [more inside]
posted by kurmbox on Aug 7, 2008 - 18 comments

Wired: "In February, a B-2 stealth bomber crashed in Guam. Now we know why. And we've got video of the scene." (good stuff starts around 1:20)
posted by stbalbach on Jun 6, 2008 - 124 comments

The lavishly-furnished custom Boeing 727 figures in the current tempest over his relationship with female lobbyist Vicki Iseman who provided and flew with McCain on the plane. Lots of colorful background in this investigative report by Daniel Hopsicker, the best muckraker since Gary Webb [more inside]
posted by hortense on Feb 28, 2008 - 28 comments

A collection of airliner videos. Strangely absent: Barrel rolling a 707 [YT].
posted by saladin on Feb 25, 2008 - 24 comments

Russian cold war bombers - The Tu 95 Bear and Tu 160 Blackjack, based in central Russia, which resumed long range patrols in August.
posted by Artw on Dec 23, 2007 - 52 comments

Wednesday morning plane pr0n.
posted by saladin on Dec 19, 2007 - 46 comments

Airline Branding Weblog. Can you say "Awesome"?
posted by riffola on Oct 19, 2007 - 24 comments

Pilot tells of hairy near miss at Las Vegas airport A post on Airliners.net telling, in some detail, of a near miss between an America West Airbus A320 (piloted by the author) and an Air Canada plane at Las Vegas airport. And if that puts you off flying, to calm down, another pilot's account, of a less hair-raising flight.
posted by jontyjago on Jul 30, 2007 - 55 comments

Luigi Colani, Biomorphic Designer — This prolific master of plastic has been creating organically streamlined planes, trains, automobiles, trucks, motorcycles, ships, cities, homes, computers, cameras, televisions, furniture, pianos, ceramics, shoes, eyewear^PDF, pens, airbrushes, and other wonderful stuff (including the kitchen sink) for some 60 years. Wherever you need to go, you can reach your final destination in Colani style. More designs here, here, here, and here. [Brits and touristas take note: London's Design Museum will host a Colani exhibition, Translating Nature, from March 3 to June 17, 2007. Bibliophiles can check out the book Colani: The Art of Shaping the Future.]
posted by cenoxo on Feb 18, 2007 - 14 comments

An interesting project from the latest Vectors Journal. "Legend has it that Paglen, who has been called the Fox Mulder of cultural geography, was personally instrumental in provoking the military to extend the perimeter around Area 51 by several miles in an attempt to thwart one of his counter-surveillance efforts" [via]
posted by tellurian on Feb 16, 2007 - 5 comments

Tales of Future Past* — It's been a looong Monday. Do you want to get off the planet and out of the city to a place where you can really live? Well, here's some food for thought on the way home down life's highways. First, take a break from all this depressing war talk. Then empower yourself by giving yourself some space and maybe taking off for a few days. Drive just a bit slower, turn up the volume and imagine that your mechanic will say the tranny's OK after all. Once you're in the front door, take time to get slightly wired and forget all about politics. Get recharged for tomorrow: have a nice long bath, put your mind at ease, watch Ur Fave shOw, and listen to some soothing music. Now, don't things look a lot better? [*Note the 'Start the Tour' links at the bottom of each page.]
posted by cenoxo on Feb 12, 2007 - 10 comments

Skyrates, pronounced like "pirates," is a new flash game currently open for beta testing. Designed by a group of seven students at Carnegie Mellon University, the concept was to create an MMORPG that you could simply check on every few hours throughout the day, like you would with your e-mail. The outcome is a simple but enveloping, and somewhat silly game that manages to be addictive as hell while only taking up a few minutes per day. (plus it's free.)
posted by Navelgazer on Dec 15, 2006 - 80 comments

snake on a plane? (newsfilter-ish)
posted by analogue on Jun 2, 2006 - 25 comments

Enplaned Even if you don't care a whit about the airline inductry, this is a great example of how to blog a topic well. [via Joel on Software]
posted by cillit bang on Feb 2, 2006 - 12 comments

Asymmetric airplanes may look weird, but the idea isn't just for the luftwaffe anymore: Burt Rutan has done one too. Not counter-intuitive enough for you? How about an asymmetric helicopter?
posted by phrontist on Dec 13, 2005 - 17 comments

Note the champagne boxes. Lots of amazing interior and aerial photos of the new Airbus A380 are up on Airliners.net. It's a huge, huge plane. [There is more inside.]
posted by brownpau on Dec 10, 2005 - 36 comments

"People were tripping over each other, climbing over the seats to get to the exit." Warbaby posted a link on July 7 to an article by Lee Clark that said people don't panic in disasters. Survivors from Tuesday's Toronto plane crash give a different story. Here's one account: Ho said people at first were calm and lining up, but once fire from the back of the plane, "people were tripping over each other, climbing over the seats to get to the exit." He said a flight attendant told him to jump out the front door with no chute, but it was about a 12-fioot drop. He ran to a second door. It had a damaged chute, but he took it. "I jumped and fell onto some people," Ho said. "Some people broke their arms or legs."
posted by stevefromsparks on Aug 3, 2005 - 42 comments

The end of Concorde was one of the few times in modern history that technology has been forced to regress. But it won't take long to fix.
posted by Pretty_Generic on Jun 15, 2005 - 48 comments

Haute Voltage stunt flight (Direct .mpg. Bonus if you read Russian)
posted by growabrain on May 13, 2005 - 10 comments

The Oops List. Enjoy the pure pleasure of the misfortune of others.
posted by srboisvert on Apr 20, 2005 - 23 comments

Fantasy Planes. Sometimes I think the most interesting airplanes are the ones that never got built
posted by growabrain on Feb 10, 2005 - 7 comments

Little airplanes and cameras. Photos from RC planes on New Years Day. (via Gizmodo)
posted by mss on Jan 6, 2005 - 12 comments

The Pacific Wrecks Database is an impressive collection of information about lost and found WWII wrecks in the Pacific. The site is a little hard to navigate (I suggest using the past news archives and the direct links in the description slug on the first page, rather than the drop-down menu,) but the content is worth the trouble. Essays from veterans, discovery tales, photographs, maps, and more await.
posted by headspace on Sep 10, 2004 - 3 comments

Twin Pushers and Other Free Flight Oddities. "For years, twin pushers were the dominant form of competition model. The format was discovered well before the first world war and remained common until the  mid thirties." Dannysoar excavates a lost model airplane format, and goes on to look at Mystery Biplanes, The Airplanes of Things to Come, Miss Auto Gyro Across the Channel Day, and other winging things, in great and pleasingly eccentric abundance. Klick the Klicker!
posted by mwhybark on Jun 29, 2004 - 7 comments

Aerosite.
posted by hama7 on Dec 29, 2003 - 15 comments

Austrailian pilot stuck in Antarctica That story is interesting enough, but the background on the pilot (just your typical nurse-midwife homebuilt avionics adventurer) available here is fascinating. I love reading these stories about common folk following their dreams and accomplishing huge things. Dare I say inspiring? Lifted from SlashDot
posted by dirtylittlemonkey on Dec 11, 2003 - 13 comments

The Spirit of Butts Farm has made it across the Atlantic in one piece. Not bad for a toy plane designed by deaf and blind Maynard Hill, who already holds many records for RC aircraft flights. Those with less lofty ambitions could fly this helicopter in their living room or just practise on their computer screen.
posted by Geo on Aug 14, 2003 - 8 comments

51 Migs Found Buried in Iraq
posted by Espoo2 on Aug 9, 2003 - 50 comments

A pole in the ground + an old Plane on top of it = home sweet home. A company in Tennesee is selling old airplanes as homes on ebay. I wonder if the new homeowners ever get tired of eating those little packets of peanuts every night.
posted by mathowie on Jul 19, 2003 - 14 comments

The F-22 Raptor is the next generation fighter for the United States. At nearly 97 million each, it will be deployed in 2004.This site gives a remarkably detailed report regarding its design and function. Including such gems as "first-look, first-shot, first-kill capability" and " Humans are good differentiators, but they are poor integrators."
posted by JohnR on Dec 19, 2002 - 53 comments

How to build a bomb isn't all there is to the Internet as press would have you think. Anyway it's harder than just getting some plans, as this guy found out. So why not build a bomb shelter instead? Or build your own train, hovercraft, speedboat, car or plane - can't fly - don't worry build a flight simulator! Toast your success with DIY firewater cooked with your solar furnace. Enjoy your CB radio, listen to MP3s or toy with your sextant. And with all the kinky clothes and loads of pervy toys to make who has time to build bombs? I can see the bumper stickers now "Make leg spreaders, not war!"
posted by DrDoberman on Oct 14, 2002 - 13 comments

The effects of jet contrails on climate. Taking advantage of a unique research opportunity brought about by the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on America, when all commercial air traffic in the country stood still for three days, scientists have uncovered the first clear evidence. Link to British journal Nature article on subject and IPCC article.
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Aug 8, 2002 - 7 comments

All coach seats are not created equal Every inch counts. Airplane coach seats with extra inches of stretching room. Print out and keep handy for when you fly.
posted by Voyageman on Apr 29, 2002 - 29 comments

The sky is falling, the sky is falling! -- never mind, it's just cremated human remains.
posted by nathan_teske on Jan 15, 2002 - 6 comments

New type of RC plane going for around $100 They're electric as opposed to gas powered, lighter than their gas powered cousins, and a fraction of the cost. I've always wanted to get into RC planes, but the cost was prohibitive until now.
posted by skallas on Dec 21, 2001 - 11 comments

Lockheed Martin beat out Boeing for a $200 Billion contract to build the new F-35 fighters jets earlier today. Missile defense, planes that can take off vertically, bombs that fry electronics...military technology is accelerating at a really frightening pace.
posted by catatonic on Oct 26, 2001 - 36 comments

Air Force One wasn't a target, and administration officials now doubt there was a threatening phone call. And radar data indicates that the plane that hit the Pentagon was not headed for the White House.
posted by kirkaracha on Sep 27, 2001 - 37 comments

Flight Data Recorder found for United Airlines flight 93 in Pennsylvania. They've also found the signal for at least one of the data recorders on the Pentagon flight, as well. Assuming it's still readable, the flight recorder for UA 93 could give new insight into why the plane went down, and why they're now finding debris 6 miles from the crash site. (The information for flight 93 came from CNN broadcast, but hasn't made it online yet.)
posted by elfgirl on Sep 13, 2001 - 13 comments

Plane crashes in Mexico, killing 19. Despite a few early misleading reports, foul play is NOT suspected.
posted by bargle on Sep 13, 2001 - 2 comments

Canada: Spillover Nation Essentially every airport in Canada able to land a jumbo jet has done so. Halifax is packed to the walls with 44 planes; 24 at Pearson; 14 at Mirabel; two in Whitehorse, one of them, a KAL cargo plane, undergoing an escorted quasi-emergency landing because the pilot could not communicate in English with the control tower (!) to explain that the plane was low on fuel. Serious echoes of Swissair 111, where suddenly the small Atlantic airports showed themselves as invaluable and irreplaceable.
posted by joeclark on Sep 11, 2001 - 4 comments